180 



V. — Some Inquiry into the Association of the Dialects of Devon and 

 Cornwall. — By R N. Worth. 



Read at the Spring Meeting, May 18, 1869. 



N the earlier Numbers of the Journal of this Institution there 

 appeared a series of Papers on the pecuHarities of the Cornish 

 dialect ; Mr. T. Q. Couch, of Bodmin, contributing a Glossary of 

 Words in local use in East Cornwall, and the late Mr. Garland 

 discharging a similar office for the common speech of the Western 

 portion of the county. It struck me at the time that there was 

 nothing distinctively Cornish in a number of the words adduced ; 

 but it was not until recently that I made a more careful examina- 

 tion of them, with the view of selecting therefrom such as I knew 

 to be in current use in the county of Devon. Of course it does 

 not always follow that the employment of a peculiar word, the 

 use of an ordinary word in a peculiar sense, or the existence of 

 a well-defined peculiarity of pronunciation, in both of the sister 

 counties, is a proof that either did not originate to the west of the 

 Tamar. The interchange of population and the course of traffic 

 must in the progress of centuries have established many Devon- 

 shire words in Cornwall, and have introduced many Cornish 

 words into Devon. And of late years the process has been, on 

 one side at least, greatly accelerated by the inducements held out 

 to large bodies of the Cornish industrial classes to settle in the 

 Three Towns of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse, and their 

 neighbourhood. I offer no opinion as to the origin of the words 

 contained in the list which I have the pleasure of laying 

 before the Institution. Many of them are undoubtedly national, 

 and not in any true sense provincial ; others are the common 

 property of the West of England ; but when these are eliminated, 

 and those about whose Devonian origin there can be no disjjute 

 also set on one side, there will still remain a large number of a 

 more or less unsettled character. 



